Horrible news. Simply horrible.

Recently Futurama fan site www.gotfuturama.com reported that Fox did not pick up Futurama for season 5 (2002-2003). Apparently animation studio Rough Draft told its animators to find new jobs. Dammit. Immediately this news spread throughout the geek infested web, all the way to former king-geek news source aint-it-cool-news.com.

And if they print it, it has to be true.

Right?

Well, no, but honestly, I'm not doubting the veracity of the report.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. Fox scheduled the show at 7 pm on Sunday nights. Terrible time slot. Terrible. Someone has it in for the show, I bet. Especially since the design and humor of the show is so similar to The Simpsons. Why the hell not put it on after the Simpsons and put Malcolm in the Middle, I dunno, somewhere where it won't bother me?

Back to my point, showing Futurama at 7 pm on Sundays means that it's constantly being bumped by football and the like. Sources say that Fox has a shitload of unaired episodes between seasons three and four - anywhere from twenty to thirty shows!! Since a season is only nineteen to twenty-five episodes, why not not pick up the show for 2002-2003? It makes fiscal sense.

The crappy part of this is two-fold. All of the writers and artists are going leave and find new gigs, so in the rare chance if Fox wants more Futuramas next year at about this time, they'll have a whole different crew, and #2, Futurama only needs sixteen more episodes to reach its syndication requirement.

At least, that's what one report said. It makes sense, it takes five seasons for most shows to reach 100 episodes, the magic number of episodes for "stripping" (running a show five times a week). That's where the production company makes its money. "Off-network syndication" - selling the show on a market-by-market basis to the highest bidder.

Other internet rumors say that Fox is in a fight with Matt Groening, the creator of both Futurama and The Simpsons. Most likely this whole problem is the result of some clash of egos. And it's sad, really, that we'll be deprived of new episodes of the show, and the constant syndication of all of the old ones we missed.

So we still have a year's worth of new episodes, but beyond that ... who knows?

- Josh Edwards